The Irish Hospital Consultants Association (IHCA) has called on Minister for Health Simon Harris to urgently address the appointment of non-specialist doctors to specialist consultant posts as it is compromising patient safety and care.
One in seven medical consultants employed across public and private hospitals have not completed specialist training in medicine or surgery, the Sunday Business Post reported.
Figures provided by the Medical Council show 650 active medical consultants - out of 4,373 - said they were not on its specialist register in 2015.
IHCA president Dr Tom Ryan said an increasing number of specialist consultant posts are being filled by doctors who are not eligible to be on the Medical Council’s Specialist Register.
Dr Ryan called on Mr Harris to immediately end the practice of appointing doctors who are not on the specialist register to work as Specialist Consultants in the health service.
“ It is not acceptable that doctors who do not have the essential specialist training, skills and expertise are treating patients as specialist consultants in our acute health services. This compromises and undermines the quality and safety of care that is provided to patients in our hospitals. The crisis in the recruitment and retention of consultants should not and cannot be resolved at the expense of patient safety,”he said.
Dr Ryan said the Government’s decision to breach contract terms entered into with consultants in 2008 and the discrimination against new entrant consultants “represent costly errors.”
“To plug the expanding gaps in consultant staffing, the State and our hospitals are paying multiples of the official salaries for temporary and agency consultants,” he said.
“Those decisions represent a false economy that must be ended without delay as patients are being deprived of care while health service agency costs total €115 million per year,” he said.
“To plug the expanding gaps in consultant staffing, the State and our hospitals are paying multiples of the official salaries for temporary and agency consultants.”
The overall recruitment and retention crisis in the health service has seen authorities unable to fill about 400 consultant posts on a permanent basis.